1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method, a system, and a computer program product of providing augmented reality (AR), and more particularly, to a method, a system, and a computer program product providing AR based on marker tracking techniques utilizing edge detection.
2. Description of Related Art
Augmented reality (AR) technology allows a person to see or otherwise sense a computer-generated virtual world integrated with the real world. With the help of AR technology, a user's current perception of reality can be enhanced when the user interacts with the virtual object. Tracking techniques are essential to determine whether AR can accurately overlay the virtual object or information over the real world.
Common tracking techniques can be divided into sensor-based techniques and vision-based techniques. The sensor-based tracking techniques require additional installation of particular hardware devices such as magnetic, acoustic, inertial, optical and mechanical sensors, and thus are more costly. On the contrary, the vision-based tracking techniques use conventional cameras as sensors and require lower costs.
The objects tracked by applying the tracking techniques include artificial markers and random pictures with distinguishable features. The properties of the so-called artificial markers, e.g. shapes, sizes, and colors of the markers, have to be well defined in advance, and thereby the markers can be easily tracked in a complicated environment. By contrast, when the random pictures with distinguishable features act as the objects to be tracked, the random pictures are not strictly limited to be in a specific form, so as to achieve various AR effects. However, in such case, the system providing AR requires high volume of computation and is relatively weak.